


Mudlarks

by tigrrmilk



Category: Lynes and Mathey Series - Amy Griswold & Melissa Scott
Genre: M/M, The Thames, mudlarking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:47:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21839203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigrrmilk/pseuds/tigrrmilk
Summary: There were many places Ned would happily follow Julian. Into the sickly, dirty Thames, was not one of them.
Relationships: Julian Lynes/Ned Mathey
Comments: 2
Kudos: 25
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Mudlarks

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Slantedlight (BySlantedlight)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BySlantedlight/gifts).



> happy yuletide!

It was already starting to get dark as they climbed down a rather old and unhappy set of stairs, in the direction of the Thames foreshore. Ned was warm from the brandy taken in his lodgings before they set out, but still sharp enough to wonder what on earth they were doing here.

“Lynes,” he said, but Julian put out a hand to stop him from walking any further. He was holding an umbrella, and over one arm he’d flung a rather faded old bath-towel, which Ned considered ominously. There were many places he’d happily follow Julian. Into the sickly, dirty Thames, was not one of them.

Of course, even then, depending on the circumstances --

“Socks and shoes off is probably best,” Julian said, with no more explanation, cutting off Ned’s line of thought. Julian crouched down and pulled off his own shoes with alarming speed, dangling them from his left hand by the shoelaces.

After a long pause, Ned followed suit. “I’m not going for a swim,” he said, as he tugged off the second sock. “I hope you don’t think that’s where this afternoon is headed.”

“No,” Julian said, and twirled the umbrella with what was, Ned suspected, a hint of impatience. Ned straightened up and wiggled his toes against the mud. It was cold, and not particularly pleasant. He already missed the warmth of his socks

Julian looked around to ascertain that they were alone, and offered Ned his arm. Ned took it, after a furtive glance of his own, and they carefully made their way down towards the water. There were a handful of children scrabbling around by the river, but nobody to pay them any attention.

“I’m not much for paddling, either,” Ned warned Julian. “Not unless I’m at Margate in high summer, and you ply me with ice-creams first.”

Julian looked Ned up and down at that. “What a pity,” he said. “There’s nobody selling ice-creams here for me to ply you with.”

Before Ned could think of how to respond, Julian started to scrape his umbrella along the ground, like he was digging for something. “We’re here for this,” he said. “You remember my last case, all of that business about the typeface dumped into the river?”

“Yes,” Ned said. Nasty business, but Julian had seemed to solve it very quickly.

“Well, I was speaking with some of my -- less respectable contacts about the circumstances there, and they tipped me off about this spot. A lot can wash up from the Thames, you see.”

“You can’t be hoping to find the type here,” Ned said. He put his hands up to shield his eyes and swept his gaze up and down the river. “Your best estimate had it at least three miles west of this point."

“Oh, I know that,” Julian said. “Leave the type to drown. I was looking for other things.”

Ned watched in silence for a while as Julian dug at the mud with the tip of his umbrella, unearthing what looked like a few colourful fragments of pottery. After a while, he crouched down and came up with a clay pipe.

“Seventeenth century, I should think,” Julian said, and wiped some mud from it. “River’s littered with them.”

“There’s another there,” Ned said, and pointed a few feet away. Neither of them made the attempt to collect it. They were everywhere around here. Along with fragments of broken pots and plates, broken red tiles, and bits of old animal bone. Ned was sure it was mostly animal bone. “I suspect you’re not just here looking for two-hundred year-old evidence of recreational tobacco smoking?”

Julian smiled. “No, I’m mostly here in case a cursed watch my contact warned me about turns up,” he said. “It’s been put inside an ornamental crab shell. It was banked into the river from a little boat...” he paused and then gestured towards the water. “I don’t know, twenty yards that way. This was the nearest point on land...”

“It might be too much to hope for,” Ned said. “Do you know who cursed it? And who it belongs to? I suppose I could try something.”

“Yes, I thought you might,” Julian said. “But I also thought you might be interested in the riverside, down here. How much washes up. Some of this pottery is hundreds of years old. Some of these old bits of flint could have been in this old river for more than a thousand years. Before the Romans were here.”

Ned _was_ interested in this, in fact. “It’s practically a museum,” he said. “All this mud, preserving anything that falls into its grasp.” His feet were getting used to the feeling of the mud and stones. He was cold, but glad to be here.

“Exactly,” Julian said. He sounded satisfied, and Ned was pleased that he’d said the right thing.

“Now, about this curse,” Ned started.

“Ah, yes,” Julian said. “He’s not so concerned about getting the watch _back_. More just concerned that if anyone, or anything comes across it unexpectedly... well. It’s quite a nasty piece of work.”

“I suppose neutralising it would be slightly easier than finding it,” Ned muttered. “Let’s see if we can’t find some shells. Doesn’t have to be crab, I could make do with something else in a pinch, as long as they’ve both been in the water...”

After walking along the shore for a few moments, Julian prodded an ominous pile of broken oyster shells. “Would these do?”

Ned considered them for a moment, and grimaced. “If there’s nothing else,” he said. “I worry that somebody’s just dumped the remains of their lunch. If it’s been dredged up from the river proper, we’ll have better luck.”

Ned walked one direction, and Julian in another. Ned was starting to consider paying one of the small boys for any shells _he_ could find, when he spotted something. Half exposed on the shore, but still half-submerged in water, he could have sworn it was the underbelly of a crab, but a few spots on it glinted and glittered -- a little strangely. He reached into his coat for his wand, considering if some better light was needed to see it by -- was it just a trick of dusk, lamp-light --

“Lynes,” he said, finding it hard to tear his eyes away. “I might have it.”

Ned started to lean towards the shell with his wand, but Julian arrived in time to knock his hand away with the side of his umbrella. “Don’t get too close, Ned,” Julian said.

“Right,” Ned said. He didn’t know the details of the curse, after all. “Yes.”

Julian leant forward and spotted the shell. “I’m not so sure,” he said. “I think it’s supposed to be painted -- bronze. But I suppose it would work for the counter-curse a damned sight better than the oyster shells.” He considered the old shell for a moment longer, made to turn it over as lightly as he could manage with his umbrella, and then --

Then there was a loud cracking noise and a flash of light.

\---

“Oh, yes, much better,” Ned said. “Prod it with your completely mundane, not-at-all-magically-protected umbrella and almost lose a hand. Excellent strategy.” He flung himself down onto the sofa next to Julian and scratched at his ankle.

Ned had come away from the whole scene unscathed, except for a few scratches sustained while he was scrambling to get to Julian. For a second he’d thought that the blast was going to knock him into the water -- he shook his head to clear his thoughts of an image of Julian, sinking below the waterline. No. Never happened. _Never will_ , Ned thought, fiercely.

“My hand is fine,” Julian said, which was only mostly true. It had a nasty purple line snaking across his palm that Ned dearly hoped would fade within a day or two. “And we found the watch, and you neutralised the curse, so, in the end --”

“It was quite a nice afternoon out, until that,” Ned said. “Quite educational. You could start a little Saturday School. Teach the mud-larks some history.”

“Ned,” Julian said, turning to look at him. He pressed his undamaged hand against Ned’s cheek, which was rough with evening stubble. He started to lean in for a kiss. “I don’t have the temperament for teaching.”

“No,” Ned murmured against Julian’s cheek. “I suppose you don’t. A pity.” Then he turned his face to meet Julian's, and kissed him, hard.

In the morning, Ned found a neat line of pottery fragments lined up on his windowsill. They were surprisingly pretty, especially when they caught the winter sun.

**Author's Note:**

> According to the OED, mudlarks have been scavenging the river and the foreshore since at least the 18th century.
> 
> I've included a reference to the situation with the Doves Type in here - it was dumped into the Thames as part of a dispute in the early 1900s. So I've taken a bit of license with the truth regarding the exact timescale... or if you prefer: in this universe, something very similar happened a decade or two earlier.


End file.
